


Nevermore

by EightDrinkAmy



Category: Carmilla (Web Series), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass (2007)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Daemons, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-06
Updated: 2015-05-06
Packaged: 2018-03-29 08:33:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3889591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EightDrinkAmy/pseuds/EightDrinkAmy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Those who have died can never have their souls returned to them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nevermore

When Laura asks, Carmilla says her daemon is a moth. He hides amongst the folds of her clothing, safe from the public’s prying eye, never uttering a word, never fluttering his wings enough to disturb the fabric.

It’s weird. Laura knows it’s weird, and her own daemon, a little fancy mouse called Niften, does nothing to hide his discomfort. He says it feels wrong, not being able to see this girl’s daemon, no proof that he even exists. Laura can feel it too, but she says she likes it, that it’s just a nice bit of mystery. She’s already taken by Carmilla’s strange ethereal beauty.

 Weeks later, Laura still doesn’t feel as if she knows Carmilla. The mystery is too much. Niften bristles when she is near and she doesn’t speak, and she stares at the night sky, and she vanishes at odd hours.

Laura begs now for just a glimpse of the moth, of Carmilla’s soul, this so-called “Djirren”.

Carmilla refuses. She looks unperturbed, but inside her throat closes and her heart clenches. She wishes she could show Laura her daemon. She wants it more than anything, but the moth up her sleeve is silent and still, and she can’t feel him anymore. She can’t feel  _her_  anymore. She can’t feel her, and the sudden reminder of her lack of presence  _almost_  breaks her composure.

After a month, Laura can’t take it anymore. She hides in the bathroom one night, the door cracked, waiting for Carmilla to get back at some ungodly hour. Niften told her not to; he begged her to go to bed and leave it alone. He doesn’t want an explanation. He thinks it may be worse than the unknown.

Carmilla comes back after one, and Laura is so tired that she doesn’t even notice the door open; Carmilla is just suddenly  _there_.

She looks exhausted. Her eyes are hooded and she moves with a weary languor, her hair disheveled, her clothing all wrinkled. She still looks eerily beautiful, but this is the farthest from perfect Laura has ever seen her. She looks almost human.

Laura almost gets lost in Carmilla’s image before Niften snaps her out of it and points.

Carmilla has retrieved some small object from her pocket, something Laura can’t identify from her vantage point. Carmilla cradles the thing in one hand and gently strokes it with a single finger, and Laura swears she sees a tear roll down the other girl’s pale cheek.

Niften slips through the cracked door and sneaks up behind Carmilla, all too eager to see what he and Laura both took to be her daemon. His blood runs cold, though, and Laura’s in turn, when he sees the bronze coin in her hand.

Niften’s tiny gasp is enough to alert Carmilla to his presence and she whips around, swiftly trapping him beneath a pillow.

Laura falls against the bathroom door in her sudden lack of oxygen and the door swings wide open, revealing her hiding place. She stares up at Carmilla, unable to speak but silently begging for her to let her daemon go, begging for her life. She can’t move, and she can’t breathe, and for a moment she thinks Carmilla will actually let her die.

She doesn’t.

She lifts the pillow and Laura can breathe again, and Niften scrambles back to her and she holds him to her chest with both hands, tears silently streaming down her face. Carmilla expects her to run.

She doesn’t.

She keeps a tight hold on Niften, and she looks up at Carmilla, and Carmilla stares back down at her. She looks angry, she looks…she looks so angry. But Laura can see something else, some kind of sadness and hurt and fear. Vulnerability.

“You don’t have a daemon,” Laura whispers. “What are you?”

Carmilla softens and looks away, standing still, the rise and fall of her chest giving away her discomfort. It’s several long moments before she closes her eyes and shakes her head, turning to retrieve the coin that had fallen onto her bed.

“I had a daemon once. Djirra. She was a panther…. It’s my own fault I don’t have her anymore.”

Carmilla tells her everything. She explains that she was born with a female daemon, that her mother feared such a rarity would get her hurt. She’d grown up only allowed to speak to Djirra in private; anywhere else and someone might notice that she was female. She’d told people that her daemon’s name was Djirren, and that he never uttered a word, that he preferred to keep out of the public’s prying eye. She explains that when she was eighteen, she’d attended a ball and, out of a streak of rebellion, she’d told Djirra to speak to her in public. Djirra hadn’t wanted to; she was afraid. Carmilla was too, but she was angry that she couldn’t be like other people.

Djirra had spoken, and a member of the General Oblation Board hadn’t been happy. This was worse than Dust; this was another form of Original Sin, one that couldn’t be remedied by intercision.

He’d killed her.

 Mama had brought her back, but as a monster. Less than human, scum of the earth. She’d lost her precious soul, and all she had left of Djirra was a measly bronze daemon coin Mama had made for her. It could never replace the gaping hole that Djirra had left.

Laura is crying again by the end of Carmilla’s tale. Niften’s face is buried in her chest, girl and daemon unable to fathom what torture it must be for one to live without their soul, a soul that was part of them for so many years. It hurt Laura even to think about what her life would be like if she’d lost Niften and somehow kept living.

Carmilla is crying, too. It’s the first time she’d spoken of Djirra since Mama had given her the coin with a crude carving of a panther, and it hurts more than she wanted it to. It has been over three hundred years, but she still remembers what it felt like to be able to see and hear and touch her daemon.

The only comfort Laura has to offer is her own daemon. She hugs Carmilla and Niften hesitantly climbs onto her lap, and it’s not enough to bring Djirra back, but it’s enough to make Carmilla feel a little more human.


End file.
